“After the enormous success of [“The Birth of a Nation”], Thomas Dixon, who’d already made several fortunes on his writing and speaking, turned movie producer and kept making money. But he lost everything in the economic crash of 1929, and in the 1930s spent his waning years working as a clerk of court in Raleigh. […]

“On February 18 [1915] Wilson and his daughters and his Cabinet gathered in the East Room for the first running of a motion picture in the White House [“The Clansman,” later retitled “The Birth of a Nation.”] ” ‘It was like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so […]

Henry Louis Gates: [Django Unchained] is an opposite extreme of The Birth of a Nation. Did that play a conscious role in your mind? Reversing the depiction of slavery that The Birth of a Nation registered? Quentin Tarantino: Yeah, you have to understand, I’m obsessed with The Birth of a Nation and its making. HLG: […]